The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c3.5

v1.c3.5

The *Cambridge History of India* marks a new departure. The literature of the subject has become so vast, and is still growing with such rapidity, that the best hope of securing a real advance in the study now lies in a division of labour among scholars who have explored at first hand the main sources of information. This volume therefore follows the plan adopted in the modern and medieval histories published by the Cambridge University Press. It is the outcome of the combination of a number of investigators with an editor whose function it has been to coordinate, so far as seemed possible or advisable, results obtained independently. That this plan is not without its disadvantages is obvious. All cooperative enterprises of the kind involve necessarily some reiteration and also some discrepancy; and the questions which an editor must decide are how far repeated discussions of the same topic contribute to a fuller knowledge or are merely redundant, and how far different opinions admit of reconciliation or should be allowed to remain as representing the actual state of a study which abounds with difficulties and obscurities. In all important cases of the occurrence of such supplementary or contradictory views in this volume cross-references are given to the passages in which they are expressed.